Psycology Clinic
This Psychology Clinic was made in a small city called Orlandia and located 360 km far from São Paulo city.
We couldn’t visit the works of construction as often as we would like to do. I think these conditions taught us to be economical and restrictive in drawings and details, by this way we could reduce the possibilities of mistakes during the works of building construction. We tried to concentrate on few elements, that means fewer actions to the construction.
In these four examples (the houses and the clinics), we try to follow this kind of perception, maybe for that, all these projects have a common feature: they try to reduce the necessary works and undertaking for their construction, it’s a way to keep track of a work that had to be done so far from the architects, it’s a project like remote control.
In the case of the Psychology Clinic, for example, we had no more than five important undertakings:
The concrete structure, the two stonewalls, the floor, the wood panel and the glasses.
This project mirrors the path we walk on from the street (the open space) to the two consulting rooms (the only closed space available in the building). All the places that we pass through in this circuit aren’t exactly inside or outside spaces.
In Brazil, the architects can explore some climatic privileges. They are possibilities that we have in a tropical country, it seems like some licenses or liberties, as being able to have the same air conditions inside and outside of a building. In this project, the wood panels, for instance, allow air and light to pass through. These panels were done in a double layer, while the external panel is fixed, the internal one can be moved, it could be placed at the same position or not in relation with the fixed external panel, so a very small movement is enough to open or close the entire wall.
The clinic has two different levels, with 1.5 m between the two, a half level. We cut the ground and lowered the “lower level” 1.5 m, so both levels look very close from the street. This lower level considers two activities in its program: a meeting room and a library that opens to a garden located at same level. These gardens have the same reflecting pool that crosses the area from one end to the other.
The upper level shows the corridor that, like the pool, crosses the whole extension of the ground, this corridor has the reception, the waiting room, the consulting rooms, and at the end it doesn’t finish but goes down and back to the beginning. The corridor connects all the spaces and the levels of the building, with the wood panel that is transparent to the air and to the light and makes this corridor looks like a verandah.
